Jaki Liebezeit - his partner in rhythm - died in January. His wife Ursula died in July. Poor Holger must have been feeling lonely. I love to imagine him, back in the day, the early 70s, in a room filled with bits of tape hanging from the ceiling. Only he knows what they all are, and the other members of Can instinctively lower their voices when they go in, perhaps to offer coffee or some other stimulant, or just to ask Holger how's it going? Then, at some unnameable hour, he would emerge triumphantly clutching a spool. He would cue it up on the Revox, silently praying that the edits would hold, and out would come - "Mother Sky", "Vitamin C", "Soup", or some other completely unique piece of brilliance.

Now he's dead. And that whole technology that produced such marvellous music is completely obsolete. Can you imagine anyone having the patience to edit tape with a razor blade and block nowadays? It would be like writing a novel in longhand. The gains from the digital revolution are obvious, the losses less so. But they are real losses, and I for one feel them keenly.